CHAPTER 9 - THE PARTY HANGOVER

Farther In The Future, Echo Realm

Bodies washed up on shore but they weren't dead. The gentlemen had spent too much time at last night's party, and were merely splashing around while chatting about this and that. A boat along the river and its occupants had thought otherwise, and given them quite a scare. Also one of them had eaten too many slices of cake. Yet that was of no concern to the man at the party. Messenger groaned as his bruises fluctuated in manifold color. He in particular had been having too much fun. The sort of savoir faire that would get you thrown into a fountain and brushed mercilessly with hands layered in weeks old champaign. Messenger laid his neck against the back of the marble. In his mind, he considered the ways that society had ended his null emotions. The mania of things. Window shopping for the right form of drunkenness. As his clarity returned there was a very muscular ice sculpture of a man, crossing his arms, staring down at him. As if to admonish his behavior. Messenger was in a long line of revelers that went back generations. They had broken the sweet seal of life and dived deep into its sugary abyss. Endless soirees. Indulgent to the limits of imagination. Parties that history majors gossiped about in the white space of their textbooks. But that was in the past, and his thoughts longed for the future. The indentation made a fitting shape against his neck. He lifted it, and trudged through the splashing water until finding the boundary. With exertion, he lifted his leg and came to the other side. The ice man stood alone, encircled by the dead of night. Lingering promises seemed broken. Messenger felt his bicep and it was cool to the touch. He could not tarry. The portal that was the window beckoned with palpitating sounds that made his chest sweat. Frisky dancers in turn of the century outfits. Girls wooing men with timid hearts. He placed his hand against the side of a door to ensure it didn't shut at just the right moment. Air like the whisper of a wise sage swirled around him, filling the pockets of his clothes. Broken furniture littered the ground. A gentlemen blew a kiss to a girl he hardly knew. But that was of mild peripheral importance. Messenger took a moment to look back out at the cold night. Slowly he traced his eyes along the hapless expanse. The wind rushed in once more, and its breath turned his eyelashes to icicles. The darkness contracted inwards, sorrowful like a mother that had never known her son. It would have been bearable for only the strongest of men, and so he turned back around. The boats were redirected to rivers that flowed downstream and ended in places that anxiously hid in darkness. At the party, friends were playing with their pets. A man and a woman would grab one on each side. Friends inserted one at a time into big condoms, both of which were smeared somewhat with buttered popcorn. A pang in his temple made him corporal. Then a sensation swept through his frame. A feral memory. How he had been bedridden from the last party. A bed transfigured into a furrowed landscape of white sheets. His back like a plank against its length. Messenger felt drops of sweat circling around his body as he lay there panting, making spirals around his legs and arms. Laying down tracks of wetness where they drove their moisture. Like little sportscars on a spiraling track. The memory faded at just the right time, and he continued onwards. The man felt his arm being dragged. Captured by a fetching woman. Freckles and a green suit layered with white. Expansive but well behaved bosom. Solid work ethic. That kind that knew how to arrange flowers in just the right way, according to legal precedent. (A little windy from too much pink flamingo bread). And it smelt of the first day of spring and sweaty sheets and a flamingo dying in his arms after the best orgasm ever.